Archive for December, 2017

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Happy Heinlein Holiday

December 23, 2017

Bonus holiday bloggery: I have written in the past about tax and science fiction, or rather about tax in science fiction.  Next year, however, the distinguished critic Farah Mendlesohn is publishing a book about Robert Heinlein and has kindly answered here a couple of my questions about Heinlein’s attitude to tax and the future. So if you want to find out whether “don’t drink: you might shoot at tax collectors and miss” is something you need to worry about or not head over and read the interview.

See you next year!

 

Posted in Two fingers to tax | Leave a Comment »

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Evidence

December 15, 2017

What do we think? The House of Commons Finance Bill Committee are asking for written evidence on this year’s Finance Bill. Is there any point in my writing up my blog posts on measures with nil and negligible impact and asking them to consider a cull? Or would that be teaching my metaphorical grandmother to suck metaphorical eggs as surely it’s the essence of parliamentary scrutiny?

Posted in TIINs | Leave a Comment »

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Glass of almond milk, anyone?

December 6, 2017

There are 100 open consultations listed on the gov.uk website this morning, and 13 of them are from HMRC… do we not think HMRC are legislating too much???

Having a quick flick through to see if there are any which expire soon I came upon this: the draft legislation for the soft drinks industry levy (the tax on sugary drinks).  It is, in my humble opinion, wretched stuff, trying to define in legislation when is a fruit drink different from a vegetable juice different from a milk drink and what constitutes a milk substitute drink.  Treble almond milks and years of anti avoidance legislation after amusing tribunal cases sampling kale, mango and almond smoothies all round?

However my eye was, of course, instantly drawn to the TIIN, or at least to where the TIIN ought to be.  Because, look, here is what it says at the end of the draft SI for the levy itself:

A Tax Information and Impact Note has not been prepared for this Instrument as it contains no substantive changes to tax policy.

What?

No, the other piece of draft legislation (the enforcement provisions, here) has the identical final paragraph.

No.  Just, no.  The TIIN is there to inform parliament about the legislation they are being asked to rubber stamp.  There is little enough genuine scrutiny of this kind of legislative gunk as it is, and at least attaching a TIIN gives readers the chance to see what the likely impact is of letting this go through on the nod.

I was getting ready to write a righteous screed in the manner of Angry of Tunbridge Wells about how it really is appalling that no TIIN has been prepared for this entirely new tax…

…and then I used google.  And of course there WAS a TIIN, and it’s here, from when the primary legislation was published last year.

In order to inform Parliament, surely the last sentence of the draft instruments should read something like “The TIIN for this measure was published in 2016 and may be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/soft-drinks-industry-levy/soft-drinks-industry-levy”

And then I thought, oh, they’re asking for feedback on the draft legislation, and that IS feedback…  So there you go.

Posted in Consultation, TIINs | Leave a Comment »

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Interlude

December 4, 2017

Let’s take a break from the Budget TIINs for a moment and look at the open consultations here.

There are fourteen open consultations, most of them from last week.

How, exactly, does anyone envisage this is going to work, please? Are representative bodies really going to be able to consult with their members before Christmas? Or in January (tax return season, remember?)

Question for the group: is the quality of HMRC legislation improving, or deteriorating, do we think? And does adequate consultation tend to make the resulting legislation better, or worse?

Just a thought

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